Too Much of a Good Thing

The Puget Sound record for consecutive days of rain is 33. It has been raining for 24 days and the forecast is for rain through the weekend. You do the math.

Don't you dare get me wrong. I am a Northwesterner bred and born. I like the rain. I actually need the rain. We had a drought back in '87, for example, that nearly drove me insane. It didn't rain for something like 6 months and I started getting very cranky. I need my dose of misty-moisty to balance the humors and keep my moss fluffy. Washington is the Evergreen State because it rains so much. We have a rain forest here, for crying out loud, and plenty of other wooded places that are fern-filled and dripping. All that green, woodsy, salmon-jumping Northern Exposure stuff? Credit the rain.

Rain in part defines the culture here. We supposedly buy and borrow more books per capita than most other places in the country. This is one of the few places left in the US where an independent bookstore has a shot at survival. We also go to a lot of movies, per capita. And that whole coffee thing? There's a reason Starbucks wasn't born in Miami. The point is that it rains in Seattle so we stay inside a lot and try to keep warm and dry. Hence the reading/movie-watching/coffee-drinking thing.

I love rainy afternoons, reading by the fire. I love my hot coffee. The sound of rain on the roof is on my list of top 10 favorite sounds ever. Walking hand and hand in the rain, puddle jumping with The Child, kisses in the rain...I have plenty of rain credentials and proud of it.

But 24 days with virtually no break is relentless, even for me. Walking the dog is on hold because we both get so disgustingly wet. Worms are floating to the surface of my lawn (and yesterday I saw two of them doing something unsettling. I was under the impression that worms didn't have to do that sort of thing. I mean, I'm happy for the worms, but it still wasn't something I needed to see). I won't work in the garden because dirty is one thing, muddy quite another. I can't walk to the freaking garage without getting soaked. It's January and grey and everything is dripping and I'm thinking 'enough already'. Rain is romantic, flooding is not.